Yunior García Aguilera is a Cuban actor, playwright, and activist, founder of Trébol Teatro and the Facebook group Archipiélago. He was born in Holguín, Cuba in 1982.
His long and solid theatrical career began while he was still in fourth grade, writing and performing alongside his classmates. In his hometown of Holguín, he joined the Asociación Hermanos Saíz (AHS), which allowed him to gain experience and publish his works. He took on the artistic direction of the theater company Alas Buenas, whose play, Sangre, was awarded seven prizes at the National Festival of Small Format in Santa Clara.
At the age of 17, he entered the National School of Art (ENA) specializing in acting. In 2003, he founded the Trébol Teatro project alongside young actors who graduated from ENA, with the goal of creating a distinctive voice and an innovative creative space. That same year, he completed his acting studies at the ISA (Higher Institute of Art), graduating with honors.
He has written scripts for television and film. Cerdo (a fictional short film produced in 2018) was presented at the 40th edition of the Latin American Film Festival.
Yunior was one of the main figures of the November 27, 2020 (27N) protests that took place in front of the Ministry of Culture (MINCULT) by a group of artists, intellectuals, activists, and the general public following the events that occurred at the San Isidro Movement headquarters the night before. On November 26, the police evicted the young people who had taken refuge in that location in order to demand the government release the rapper Denis Solís González. Some had also been on a hunger strike for several days.
From this peaceful demonstration, a group was democratically selected to meet with the Vice Minister of Culture, Fernando Rojas, and other government representatives. The aim was to engage in dialogue to achieve agreements that would respect creative freedoms, freedom of expression, and press freedom, as well as to put an end to the repression of artists whose work deviates from the official message established by the Cuban regime. Yunior was part of the group along with Katherine Bisquet, Tania Bruguera, Camila Acosta, and others.
The playwright made headlines again due to the events that occurred in Cuba on July 11, 2021 (11J), when people across the island spontaneously took to the streets in a historic protest against living conditions, poor government management, and the lack of freedoms. He was peacefully protesting alongside other young artists outside the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) when they were violently forced into a garbage truck by State Security agents.
Subsequently, he was transferred to the Vivac prison in Arroyo Naranjo and was released days later under a precautionary measure that prevented him from going outside. From his home, García Aguilera became one of the most visible faces of this social upheaval. He granted interviews to numerous international media outlets and television channels, where he defended the Cuban people's right to build a different country while denouncing the violent repression that led to several disappearances and the unjust imprisonment of more than 600 protesters.
In July 2021, the Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez published a statement questioning the police repression against the demonstrators during the protests on July 11. Yunior responded to Silvio with a message on his social media that quickly went viral, in which he asked the musician for 15 minutes of dialogue. A few days later, this meeting took place at the Ojalá studios of the troubadour.
García Aguilera describes himself as "a civic artist who wants to build a better country where his son can defend his thoughts without facing beatings in the street and can think as he pleases without having to emigrate". He does not see himself as a politician, but rather as "a citizen driving ideas who wants to transform his reality and advocates for a horizontal leadership, based on consensus, where collective intelligence prevails and where power and decisions do not rest on a single figure." *(1)
On August 9, 2021, Archipiélago was created, a Facebook group that has over 23,000 followers and aims to give a voice to all Cubans who wish to build a new Cuba, without excluding the exile or the diaspora, while also setting specific objectives for that construction.
Those objectives are:
1. Strive for the liberation of all individuals who were detained on July 11, 2021.
2. To attempt to hold the first peaceful anti-government demonstration authorized with all legal guarantees, without repression or violent incidents.
3. Call for a plebiscite with all the guarantees provided by the 2019 constitution that allows the sovereign will of the Cuban people to be expressed at the polls.
In September 2021, Archipiélago requested authorization from the Government to march against violence in Havana on November 20. In the following days, other provinces on the island submitted similar requests to their respective Provincial Governments, thus joining the call.
Like other activists, Yunior has been besieged in his own home, preventing him from moving freely. He has been interrogated several times by State Security officials and is a victim of daily harassment from repression agencies, even being monitored by as many as eight agents at once.
On October 4, 2021, the Center for Studies on the Rule of Law, Cuba Próxima, announced the addition of the playwright to its Deliberative Council.
Source:
(1) and (2) taken from Proyecto Archipiélago, interview with Mónica Baró, August 13, 2021, 23yFlagler
